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The Week #71
by James- This week marks 1 month being at Octopus. I've been enjoying my time at the company so far and I'm learning a lot. I know I'm working more hours than at BP. I think it's a combination of things, but mostly as there isn't a time sheet to worry about, just start and end whenever, it's easier to get into a late afternoon groove.
- With the covid numbers down, after family dinner on Friday, I went out for a quick beer with a couple of co-workers. Another first in about 2 years (the last time I went out was 2019, after the last working day of the year). It was a lot of fun getting to know them better and being able chat without thinking "I should be working" in the back of my head.
- One of the solar installers came out to measure our roof to see if the QCells 3.5KWh system would actually fit and turns out, it wouldn't. The south side could fit 9 panels, but the east/west sides can't fit 3 panels each. I'm having see if they can the smaller 185w panel on the east/west.
Since we've now missed the deadline for a ¥19/KWh feed in tariff, the most we'll is ¥17/KWh. This is for the best though. As with the pressure off, we can better look into subsidies, and it looks like there may be city, prefecture, and national subsidies available to help purchase the battery and HEMS (Home Energy Management System). - Leo and I went to the Yokohama Tram Museum. I'd been wanting to go since I first heard about it after seeing a special on TV-Kanagawa about 2021 being 100 years of public transit in the city. I've been delaying going as it's a 20 minute bus ride from Kamiooka station (I like trains, not a huge fan of buses ( though they're better than cars)). You also get a discount if you go via public transit, which was nice. I think it was ¥250 or ¥350 for both of us to get in.
In addition to having a collection of trams, they have some dioramas you can drive and a tram simulator you can play. Leo just kept the tram going full tilt until it ran into the boundaries and was forcefully stopped ( about 5 meters after stop).
The museum also had a separate building where they had a huge set of pura-rail setup and if you wait your turn you actually drive them! Leo drove Dr. Yellow once, and Hayabusa twice. Paradise for any young rail fan!Leo driving Hayabusa - We went to Satoyama Park in Chigasaki to play on the big bouncy things and ride the roller slide. This time we brought a tent we got specifically for these purposes (bringing tents to the beach / big parks where you're going to be for a while seems to be a thing in Japan).
Small milestone on this trip was Leo finally decided to take of a proper sized rice-ball, rather than having bite-sized mini-rice balls. After he took a first bite he said "Oh, taking a bite of onigiri is delicious!", and beyond being relieved that he's eating his lunch was thinking "That's what we've been saying, dude!!".
We're likely going there again this weekend as we seem to have forgotten his little blue-bicycle in the rush packing and getting back to the car 🙃.
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Enjoying some pizza watching the carps with Leo.
Getting that bread. -
Checkin to Yokohama Tram Museum (横浜市電保存館)
Before the subway, Yokohama had trams!Love the subway, but wish we still had trams, too. -
by JamesJust found a hole in my DarnTough socks. They're some of my favorites and they've got an unconditional lifetime warranty. Going to give it a try. ( And maybe order me a pair for running in the mean time)
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Checkin to Chigasaki Satoyama Park (茅ヶ崎里山公園)
Playing at the park for the day.Kicking back after lunch. -
Checkin to TGオクトパスエナジー株式会社
SPA Dayz -
Commuting with noise canceling ear buds, in my case AirPodPros, changes the experience entirely. Just putting them in transports you to a quiet, peaceful place. When you take them out and your eardrums get assaulted by the noisy world is when you realize, you can’t go back.
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Checkin to Tully's Coffee
The leaves are starting to change in Tokyo. Smaller coffee this time. -
by JamesI've been blocked with Tanzawa development for a while as I mull how to simultaneously use Tanzawa to make my own unique site and let it be flexible enough for others without making them adapt to everything I do. If someone else is using Tanzawa to power their site, I want it to be an expression of them, not me.
I recently figured out the answer to allow this: plugins.
Inspired by @maique's Tanzawa Love post, I finally sat down and started working on what plugins might look like. Ideally a plugin should be able to customize or extend anything anywhere, but I'm starting small: adding things to public pages.
This is the first plugin: a widget to display the current localtime in the top nav.Localtime displayed in Tanzawa...by a Plugin
I imagine the capabilities growing over time. I'd like to let plugins store and manage data (e.g. settings), let them schedule periodic work ( e.g. call this api every hour and do something ), and maybe even run background tasks. But for now they're simple. Thank you for the inspiration @maique! -
The Week #70
by James- This week was Halloween. For Halloween Leo dressed up as Woody and we had a friend over for lunch. I made a quick chili (although they wouldn't call it chili in Texas, as I put beans in it). Leo ate it up as we called it curry and put a little cheddar cheese on top.
- Friday was a day off for all the Kraken devs in Japan. Leo's been wanting to take Yumi to the Romance Car Museum since we went together last month. So after kindergarten finished we took our bikes to the station and rode the train to Ebina.
Despite there not being very many people at the museum, we lost the lottery the ride the simulator. Maybe third time's a charm and we can drive it next time we visit the museuem. Leo and I also spent 30 minutes in the play area, which was a lot of fun. There's a latter and nets that go across the roof, with a ball pit. There's also a big window where you can watch the Odakyu line and we got a good look at a train getting washed. - I want to start running more regularly (a regular theme on the week it seems...). But one thing that "stops" me is a lack of music. When I got my Airpods years ago it sustained a solid 6 months of running regularly and doing long (~14km) runs.
The battery started failing about a year ago. 20-ish minutes into a run they'd just die, taking with it my tunes and my beats to power on. With the cold in winter they'd last about...30 seconds. They can't even handle my commute to the office.
I bought a pair of AirPod Pros to replace my old AirPods with my first check from the new job. - My first run with them was great. I'm trying a new strategy this go around; rather than always looking for scenic routes, which usually means hills, I'm going to try and keep my runs as flat as possible. This basically means running along a big road near my house.
Before when I ran along this road, even a single truck going by would drown out my music unless I had them near max volume, which can't be good for my ears. With the Pros I enabled noise canceling and they sound like EVs going by (but they still smell like the stinky trucks they are). So far so good. - We had two more meetings with some installers for solar panels/a battery for the house. Their prices weren't too dissimilar, but they both recommended Sharp panels/battery and a 2.6Kwh system. An earlier quote 2 weeks ago recommended Q-cells panels/different battery, which would let us get a bigger 3.5KWh system. While I like idea of having the same manufacturer for panels and battery, giving up a KWh of generation for the lifetime of the panels is a lot of electricity to forgo...
